I'm not against good tank drops. I'm just against there only being one option for a good tank drop. I just want the love spread around a bit. Here, all the goodies seem to have gone to one of the 4 pieces, and so far there are no other recent tanks that are even close to being as useful. I want more useful tanks, not useless, useless, uber, useless.

Expectation issues. I expect this game to be a combined arms game, where high strategy and well utilized resources will dominate simple ideas and ill-utilized resources. If we both have 3 orders, and I use all 3, while you use only 1, I expect I should have the advantage. Also, I would consider the focus of this game to be a combined arms viewpoint of the BattleTech universe. Frankly, the point system well reflects the dominance, but expense, of mechs in the world. One on one, medium-heavy mech beats pretty much any vehicle. But the vehicle costs so much less you can bring enough to make the fight even. I like even fights. This is not CBT. This is not (god help us) Mech assault. You get effectiveness out of what you pay for.

As far as your dual drop + sprint/fa shih + faction pride (at 30) + 4 atvs + BR Combat engineers goes, good luck. It *should* beat chicako, and it *should* beat a decoyed jade hawk on it's own. Why? 2 reasons:

1) Better utilization of resources (more orders used).
2) Much more expensive (with what you've been claiming, 255 for milagro combo versus well over 300 for what you're fielding).

And yet still, there are many scenarios in which milagro still wins. So many things can go wrong: you miss the first (or even both) attack. You fail your command roll (ask corle sometimes how many command rolls you can expect to get, even with 4 command units). Their extra points go into something that counters you easily (fast atv basers, artillery support, etc).

I continue to be flabbergasted at the complaints people are making, but I guess it's due to expectations. I expect complexity, variety, and an interesting game. I expect there to be usable figures in all classes (infantry, shooty vehicles, arty vehicles, vtols, mechs, quads). You expect...what? I really don't know. Big mechs shooting at each other until one falls down? I don't think so...I mean, you seem like a pretty smart guy, so I give you enough credit to assume you want the game to be more interesting than that.

-Nick

I have always like the Tank Drop. I think that WK has done a good job of toning down its power -- costlier transports, slower transports without hover or evade, less powerful tanks, tanks with shorter ranges, and the fact that you cannot shoot and load on the same turn.

The Schmidt was devasting when you could unload and fire. Then you could push to fire next turn and reload (if the tank was not based). The effect was usually 10 AP damage over two turns with the Schmidt in the transport and away from harm. Now if you push the tank, you cannot load. It must sit for a turn before you can load and go.

Anyway, I hope that they keep TD in the game. I do not think that it is the game breaker that it used to be.

@Nanhold: I have a prediction. At least 5 of the top 8 armies at Nationals will have a mech this year (Up from what, 2 last year?) and I think the winner will have one. We'll see though...I'm sure Kelswa drop will make an appearance as well.

@Topgun: Don't forget that Chikako can shoot over blocking with a 5+14=19" assault range and Alpha has an assault range of 16+5=21". Both of them are able to shoot at the tank drop from positions where the tank drop can't even return fire.

Well, noeticist basically said my oppinion. He said it quite eloquently as well, so I don't have much to add. So I'll just say: I support his view of the combined arms game as what keeps the game fun, interesting, and challenging.

@Nanhold
There hasn't been a World Championship since AoD came out, so I guess we'll wait and see what armies come out on top. Even if a non-mech army comes out on top, it will most likely be an army heavily loaded with SSw Arrow IV's and DF Donars and maybe some form of tank drop from a Zahn or Garrot...units which will be retired soon enough and would have been retired already except WK didn't want to shoot themselves in the foot by not giving anyone play time with units they hadn't even owned for a year.

This reminds me of a thread about the DF Joust when it came out.....lots of "OMG this is twisted", "cant wait to run one" etc. How many DF Jousts did you see played competitively?

We have about 7 months left of the Merc Zahn and then it's Garrotts or R10s only.

Lovely sculpt yet again. Worthless tanks....yet again. :tired:

What the F*** is wrong with you people? you just cant STAND the fact that th DF FINALLY have a decent unit again, you just cant contain yourself, and devote your entire playing experience to *****ing and moaning about one, ONE #### tactic in the game. Heres some news for you pal, the DF currently have VERY LITTLE usable units in a standard tourney. 1 usable VTOL and 2 usable infantry are the best we have to offer, we currently have NO assault vehichles that arent utter ****! Thanks to bloody wizkids! Why cant you just shut your ****ing mouths for once in your pathetic lives (if you even have any) and REMEMBER its a ****ing GAME! :mad: :mad: :mad:

THANK GOD ABOVE THAT THE DRAGONS FURY FINALLY GET A DECENT VEHICHLE WE CAN USE!

Im SO SICK of the #### the DF have been getting. AOD was a total waste of peices for the DF. :disappoin Kolyu was the only half decent peice, and she's still really difficult to use with her horrible 4/10 range. At least now we FINALLY once again have a GREAT and stable support vehichle we can use in our armies. I can only PRAY that the mech we get will at the very LEAST be playable.

Ooh, nice. Looks like a flamewar started by a disgruntled competitive player, just like in the good old days.

Always funny to read people without a life shouting to each other to get a life.

Dude, um...dude.

Take your own advice, would be what I'd suggest. And breath a few times. That sometimes helps. :)

Nick

@Noet. I expect to have a well balanced game ... and combined arms. But when I see units like this I see some definite potential for things to get skewed drastically away from balanced. I'll wait and see just how truely effective it is ... since we don't know the exact stats as of yet it's not worth getting in to an arguement over. But from the general description it does sound to be at least a concern.

@Nighthawk. I did not forget about Chikaos streak nor Alphas mega range. Why do you think I added the Sprint/Fa Shih? Fa Shih-drop can be done from outside of Alphas range and will lock her down in place unless she decides to break and gets lucky despite the grapple. And since she is based she can't AO and thus will not even be able to take a shot at the APC since it will stop outside her 16" and will push the following turn to unload & fire. For Chikako the tank drop outranges him unless he has his preferred pilot at the helm or Gabriel. If he has one of those two pilots then it will depend on PC cards so the tank drop won't always work against him. And I fully expect to see more than 50% of the finalists at Worlds to have one or more mechs in their army. But I also fully expect to see at least 1 or two Kelswa drops, and possibly tank-drops with this unit as well.

@Zap. I don't know of any great players who were overly concerned about the Joust. Good? Sure ... for the cost. But nothing to rave about.

@Deus. DF suffers from chronic critical-hate syndrome I think. They got so much uber love in most of the key aspects of the game in the early days that a majority of players who didn't play that faction got seriously jaded against them getting so much good stuff. It'll take a while for that to wear off.

Okay, this is from page 3 of this discussion, but I didn't have an answer at the time and I just sorted it out.

Here's your proof:

Look at the definitions for "controller" and "friendly" in the
back of the rule book:

"controller: The player able to give orders to a unit is its controller."

"friendly unit: A unit you control or one that is controlled by a teammate."

Since you can't give orders to a unit in a transport, you are not by
definition the controller and, therefore, it is not considered
friendly until you drop it. Since FP requires the unit to be
"friendly," it can't be used on units in the transport.

Since DF's +1 attack must be assigned "at the beginning of your order phase," you canNOT use DF FP on the Tokugawa when you drop it.

Hahahahahahahahaha!

I'm sorry, but this about made me fall out of the chair laughing. After all the months (years?) of people complaining "put the MECH back in MECHwarrior!" all I have to say about this is... ABOUT TIME.

---

As for this tank... The DF is the only usable one. I agree with everyone else's sentiments in that regard; the other factions' versions shouldn't suck so bad. And because they do, the DF version just screams "hi, I'm an Ebay magnet".

I sure look forward to dropping one out of my DF Garrot, though. /evil grin

That's an opinion still. It doesn't satisfy the burden of proof.

It could also be said that "friendly unit" doesn't use the term "controller". What is more just because a unit cannot at that moment receive orders does not mean it isn't able to receive orders from you.

This is one that will need a clarification to sort out because the definitions are too vague to stand up to close scrutiny. There is enough doubt from both angles that either interpretation can be justified.

Hence until we get an official clarification, I'd check with the lead envoy prior to an event to check their interpretation.

Ncluff basically hits it on the head.

As a RotS player I find the whole thing very illustrative of the way WK' collective unit-designing brain works. I mean, they call the RotS variant the "most defensive variant" simply because it has Decoy. But it doesn't have Evade, so what's the point? A 20 def. w/Evade is generally harder to shoot than a 20 def. w/Decoy, plus Evade lets you break easy. So actually the LEAST defensive variant is the RotS one, assuming the others all have 20 defense (which they imply but I kinda doubt in the case of the DF one). Their point calculator thinks an extra few clicks of life where your stats are too low to damage infantry are worth having, which simply isn't the case with a droppable vehicle.

Again, the issue isn't that DF's variant is quasi- uber; it's powerful but it's not nearly as far out of line as, say, the DF Donar. The issue is that the HD and RotS variants are totally worthless garbage; they pay for SE that doesn't help them, and their attack values are pathetic, and their damage values are mediocre. The HK variant has some potential simply because it's impossible to hurt it with damage, like all HK units. The DF players complain about not getting stuff (which makes less than no sense; their DI Schmitt got retired, but they've still got an ATV, the broken-### Donar, a top-tier 3-cap, a plethora of good 'Mechs, a great Shun, the only good Zibler, those Trackbikes, some decent 10" JJ foot infantry, and I'm not even a DF player), but really they're complaining because they lost the Schmitt and this isn't quite as good even though it's a cheap, super-accurate, 0" minimum 360 arc unit that deals good damage and has a potentially game-breaking new SE.

The point is that DF got too many superb units next to other factions. Most of them go beyond DF strenghts and have high damage and lots of good SE plus they always have good attack values and speed.

At the only expense of 2 inches less in their range (which can be countered), oh please.

I don't hate DF but things are quite a bit unfair sometimes.

.